Funding for the Summit Avenue streetscape is on the agenda for the Tuesday, March 16 Greensboro City Council meeting.
The $7.7 million for street and sidewalk improvement on Summit Avenue has been a long time coming.
In 2002, when the Charles B. Aycock Neighborhood Association (now the Dunleath Neighborhood Association) held a charrette to develop plans to improve the area, it’s a safe bet that none of the participants thought it would take 19 years for the city to fund their ideas.
But there has been progress since 2002. In 2003, the City Council adopted the “Strategic Plan for the Aycock Neighborhood.” And, in 2006, the City Council made up of Mayor Keith Holliday and Councilmembers Sandra Anderson Groat, Florence Gatten, Yvonne Johnson, Dianne Bellamy-Small, Goldie Wells, Tom Phillips, Mike Barber and Sandy Carmany approved the Summit Avenue Corridor Plan with recommended streetscaping improvements that are similar to what the City Council is funding in 2021. Councilmembers Johnson and Wells will be the only two councilmembers with the opportunity to vote for the plan and for the funding.
Phase One of the Summit Avenue streetscape plan on the agenda will cover the area from Bessemer Avenue to Percy Street and also include Yanceyville Street from Fifth Avenue to East Lindsay Avenue.
The current version of this project began with public meetings in 2016 and 2017. Evidently the statute of limitations had run out on the public meetings in 2002. Those meetings were followed by right-of-way acquisition with Phase 1 construction to begin in April.
Phase 2 includes improvements from LeBauer Park to the railroad underpass and is supposed to begin in the spring of 2022 and be complete by the fall of 2022, which happens to be 20 years after that first meeting.
It is fitting that the Summit Avenue streetscape project ties in with the Downtown Greenway project, which is even older than the Summit Avenue project. The Downtown Greenway was included on the Center City Master Plan in 2001.
Just what we need. . . . .more trees which will shed their leaves in the fall requiring cleanup, and then there’s the grass to mow from spring to fall, so how much money will be spent on this on an annual basis? Certainly it will require more employees, more tree/turf management equipment, etc.
The same thing about spending is seen in the constant installation of sidewalks all over the city, even in places where people don’t walk. Guess the council sees all of Greensboro as some small quaint town not near interstates, tall buildings, etc. As an example, how many people have you seen walking on West Friendly Avenue past Guilford College after they installed the sidewalks, or Pisgah Church Road east of Battleground?
Wake up voters! Your wallet is about to get smaller.
Good, this part of the city has been overlooked for far too long.
Out of respect for the designer, please credit the source of the illustration of the streetscape design.
I don’t think you need to give credit to the free clips the rhino uses. 100% that is not actual drawings for summit ave.
Hey, can we get some stuff for our neighborhood, too? Like finishing the intersection construction at W. Market & Guilford College Rd.? You know, the one that has been on-procrastinating for years now? Hmm?
But Summit Avenue has Virtue Value .. your intersection , unfortunately , can’t be the mayor and council patting themselves on the back
How does 7.7 million dollars of landscaping improve people’s lives in the neighborhood? Same thing goes for the Horsepen Creek “streetscaping”
You mean where they cut down the trees so they could “pave paradise and put in a parking lot’? Greensboro, where they use tax money to cut down trees and destroy people’s yards and privacy, then use tax money 20 years later to plant more trees. Round and round they go.
This is good. It is time
But not on my dime. Plant a tree yourself. If I can do it, so can you.
iT IS amazing to me that so much money can be found for streetscaping, performing art centers and parking garages, but very little goes to schools. Doesn’t the city bear responsibility for any funding for school repairs and supplies for the children of this city? Just because it is called Guilford County Schools, the majority of students live in the City of Greensboro. How long has Hampton sat empty and unrepaired or built anew until the county voters are coerced into approving a bond to take care of this and other schools in the city of Greensboro? If they have no responsibility for schools how about renovating community centers, sports fields and other places that benefit children of this city.
You are correct the city bears absolutely no responsibility for funding the schools. Schools are funded by the county and the state.
Really?